Côte Rôtie Cuvée Terroirs 2005 (R. Rostaing)
Hello,
it’s 17°C in Paris and tgif!
My friends are passionate people. Be it art, food, fashion, literature, cars , travel, sports or dental hygiene, they mean business. This can spur some interesting conversations as you can imagine. What’s fascinating, is that I find that people who are passionate about something are more likely to show interest in another’s subject of passion as well. Gather a bunch of specific-domain-geeks in a room and you’ll be sure to hear neurones popping. I would actually really like to know what started each person’s passion, was it an event that can be pin-pointed in time? Is there an actual physical object they can point out as the trigger? It’s wonderful to hear people compare their domains and brainstorm through their personal sets of knowledge and references to come up with hypotheses and answers to shared questionings.
My trigger was Côte Rôtie. There are wines that can induce passions. Here’s one. Nothing less, indeed. Here’s a wine that comes packed with emotion, accuracy, finesse, a wine that tells us a story we want to listen to, we want to taste, for a long time. Côte Rôtie (literally; roasted hill), most northern AOC of the Côtes du Rhône, carries this name because in the summer the sun shines so potently that it gets very hot there. Hence, the grapes mature beautifully, and concentrate themselves with sugar and ripe tannins. The soil offers a variety of terroirs, allowing for the vines to source a multitude of oligoelements. The result is an ample and dense wine which combines finesse and strength, structure and fluidity. A very great wine.
René Rostaing is a famous winemaker. His cuvées are much sought-after, and this particular one is a great introduction to the (much more expensive) La Blonde and La Landonne.
The wine is at first a bit marked by alcohol. It needs to breathe and opens up to be deceivingly simple. In fact the complexity hides behind great fluidity, and many levels of fruit, earthiness, character can be perceived. You want to linger on each sip but the bottle goes down very fast. Fantastic. The kind of wine that makes you want it to be chilly all year…
Winely yours,
Judith S.
